Your organisation is sending more information electronically than ever before

We’re IT people, so we know that businesses are transferring more information electronically than ever before between employees, business partners, and customers. We’re exchanging information to improve our top line—perhaps increasing the number of business partners or volume of transactions— and to improve our business processes and efficiency.

Files move as part of a business process and need to stay connected to it.

After years of developing and supporting Managed File Transfer (MFT) systems with thousands of customers, I can say that the “smart money” companies think about their file movement through the lens of their business processes – or how their business works.

Let’s take the process of reporting an accident to an insurance company as one example of the many reasons files move to get work done.

While at an accident scene, a mobile claims agent receives a customer’s insurance policy, which has been sent from the policy system of record.

The agent views the policy on a tablet, and then uploads information and pictures of the accident, which are sent back to the customer’s master record in the policy system.

The new information is shared, or “moved” to the claims processors as well.

Perhaps during the process, the claim is transferred to a business partner, or underwriter, and then returned.

Customer service then reaches out to the customer, sending a summary of the claim and the pictures.

Your business is likely moving a lot of files between people, systems, and businesses too. They may be sent as part of more tightly defined business process like the insurance example above, or more loosely defined. And the common denominator – each file movement is part of a process.

That leads to a few realisations:

That file based process needs to work for business to get done. There’s no margin for error.

That file needs to stay associated with the process – such as a patient’s permanent record

While systems often move files, people are a critical element of the process

You can’t responsibly leave the reliability, security, visibility, and control of these file transfers supporting your business processes to chance. That would expose your business to an awful lot of risk.

An MFT System brings order, predictability, and security to file movement- improving business performance and reducing risk.

Think of the all the types of file transfers within your business that are associated with file-based business processes. An MFT system can bring security, reliability, visibility, and control to those processes – with very little effort.